Facebook released its quarterly report on Broadly Viewed Content. The report shows the types of content that users share the most and gives a look at the types of content that perform well in Facebook’s algorithm.
Most Facebook content will not link out
Getting traffic from Facebook doesn’t seem like it used to be. Views from Facebook feeds tend to stay on Facebook.
Facebook feeds with links accounted for only 14.6% of pageviews. The vast majority of Facebook feed views (85.4%) do not contain links.
Also, when a post does contain a link, that link tends to come from a Facebook page that the Facebook member follows.
When Facebook members viewed posts with links, only 2.5% were from friends and followers, which are generally considered trusted sources.
Of the remaining linked posts, 1.2% were from groups the member joined, 7.7% were from pages the member followed, and 3% were from posts unrelated to the member.
The majority of unlinked posts (48.6%) that appear on Facebook in member feeds are people created and followed by friends. The rest came from groups (18.5%), follow pages (8.4%), unconnected posts (7.7%) and what Facebook calls “other” (2.3%).
Facebook content is a long tail without a head
When comparing people’s reading, listening, searching or buying habits, there are always large numbers of people who read the same books, listen to the same music, search for the same things and buy the same products.
But there are also very rare books, music, searches and purchases.
When these reading, watching, listening, and buying habits are organized into a graph with a huge group on the left, then a long descending line to the right, representing millions of unique and unusual Viewers, buying and listening habits.
Groups that tend to do the same thing are called heads. Huge groups with unusual tastes are called long tails.
For Google, 15% of search queries are uncommon. But for the links people see in the Facebook feed, only 0.1% of the top feed content views are from the top 20 sites outside of Facebook.
That means most people don’t see the same thing on Facebook.
When it comes to what people watch on TV, a huge percentage of viewers are watching the same thing, which means they’re consuming top content.
But with the Facebook ecosystem, people see things differently, so much so that no external site has achieved as much popularity as movies, music, and TV shows.
An interesting fact shared in the report is that all Facebook members are exposed to content that is unique to them.
No content can reach all members and reach a dominant level.
Facebook explained:
“…While our most-viewed content may have a large number of content viewers, measured as a percentage of all Facebook content viewers, they represented only a small fraction of total U.S. feed views during the quarter. In short, It’s not uncommon for different people to see the same content in their feeds.”
Facebook states:
“…While our most-viewed content may have a large number of content viewers, measured as a percentage of all Facebook content viewers, they represented only a small fraction of total U.S. feed views during the quarter.
In short, it’s not uncommon for different people to see the same content in their feeds. “
Of the 20 most popular links on Facebook, only 3 link to news sites, and 1 link (#16) no longer exists because Facebook removed links that violated community standards (after being viewed nearly 28 million times) .
Most Viewed Facebook Pages
Unlike how things work in the real world, in the Facebook world, no single Facebook page can get a huge following in the US.
The top 20 Facebook pages in Q4 2021 accounted for only 1.1% of all Facebook pages.
Of the 20 most popular Facebook pages, the #1 Facebook page was removed for violating community standards. The offending page received more than 121.8 million views before it was removed from Facebook.
Most of the top 20 Facebook pages were about recipes, cute animals, TV nostalgia and other mostly trivial pages that seemed to indicate that people on Facebook wanted to be entertained or Amusing boyfriend’s daughter visiting because “she needs constant attention”, the page features a video of a pug bathing and a photo of a pair of French bulldogs mouth-to-mouth as if kissing.
The list of the top 20 Facebook pages paints a portrait of an American hooked on Facebook, taking a quick endorphin shot from a page offering a “daily dose of Woof Woof.”
Here is a list of the top 20 Facebook pages:
- This page was removed by Facebook for violating the Community Guidelines.
- thinker
- WomenWorking.com
- do you remember when
- newsman
- LADBible Australia
- dodo
- 3 a.m. thoughts
- 97.1 QMG
- Eric Alper
- Wang Wang Wang
- sarcastic honey
- Having fun in the kitchen with my 3 sons
- student bible
- Unilever
- BithiriSathi fans
- Terra
- Daily Mail Video
- Lessons from Living Company
- Selindy Bae GH
Most Viewed Facebook Posts
Similar to link and page statistics, no Facebook post goes viral and is seen by the majority of Facebook members.
The top 20 Facebook posts account for only 0.1% of all Facebook content views. For most people, the posts people view on their Facebook feeds make a big difference.
Much of the top 20 was trivial, such as a nine-second video of a man pulling a mole on his neck using a vacuum-like device. The video was the fourth most popular post on Facebook in Q4 2021, with a staggering 57.4 million views.
Screenshot of the fourth most popular Facebook post
The sixth most popular Facebook post in Q4 2021 was a six-second video of an angry woman throwing a drink in a man’s face.
It’s very similar to the movie Idiocracy, which depicts a guy so dull they go to a movie for 90 minutes to watch a guy fart in his butt.
Widely viewed Facebook content
Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that the number of posts that don’t link to another site greatly outnumber posts that link to another site.
The next most interesting takeaway is that there are no universally popular popular pages and posts on Facebook. Most people see a unique Facebook news feed.
The final point of Facebook’s report is that Americans appear to be seeking a distraction.
